The Measure of Emptiness Reviewed

review by George Knox

The Measure of Emptiness, by Lee Gurga. Press Here. P.O. Box 4014, Foster City, CA 94404. 1991. Paper, 79 pp. $8.25 ppd. Checks payable to Michael D. Welch.

Lee Gurga discovered haiku when he was in high school in 1966, when he found the set of Blyth’s Haiku in a bookstore and from that time became an enthusiast. In spite of diverse interests mathematics, Asian studies, the dance, and his profession, dentistry, as a poet he brings an interest in the ostensibly “simple” quotidian experiences. Concluding this volume is an interview between Michael Dylan Welch and the author. Welch’s final question is “What motivates you to write haiku?” Lee concludes a discussion of “relationships” as follows: “My personal destiny is somehow intertwined with haiku, and has been since the dawning of my consciousness in adolescence. I don’t feel this with any other kind of writing, nor with any other activity with the exception of planting trees and wildflowers. But please don’t misunderstand me: this is not to say that I suppose there is anything ‘special’ about my work, or that it is better than the writing of those differently related to haiku. But then, of course, the aim of haiku is ‘nothing special’—that special ‘nothing special’ that somehow touches us at the core of our being.”

The haiku in this volume illustrate two important features in American poetry. The first is the appeal of native materials, which he prefers to call “everyday materials,” specifically in this instance the settings of his midwestern background. This harmonizes historically with the various calls for an American literature, dating back to the eighteenth century, when our writers were urged to create a “national” art, to reflect the spirit and particulars of our environment and “character.” Ironically, in the haiku genre, the impetus to use the indigenous has received stimulus from some poets in the country of its origin. It has been the advice of leading Japanese haijin, such as Yagi Kametaro and Kazuo Sato, to open ourselves to the here and now, the immediate particulars of our environments and experiences. American haikuists have also learned by example, from the Japanese masters in their own works. The study and writing of haiku is now international and, as predicted, the form is changing and being adapted to diverse cultures. Editorial flexibility has encouraged the kinds of experimentation and diversity in form we see in the current journals. However, the emotional and intellectual dynamics, the “haiku vision,” remains the central focus.

Formally, Lee Gurga’s haiku follow a triadic structure of lines varying in length. Usually, the second line is longest, although one finds radical exceptions:

foxglove

         hums

the autumn hillside (28)

thunderstorm

sinks

the Christmas snow (32)

Sometimes he creates “minimalist” three-liners:

after

chickadee

stillness (27)

postal chess

he moves me

from his cell (48)

holding

your hand . . .

heartbeat (55)

Generally, he reflects the tendency to abandon the 5-7-5 structure. In the entire volume I find only four 5-7-5 haiku, with many variations being the norm, as pieces “rhetorically” demand. The strictly formal aspects of his haiku are not, however, the prime concern of this review. In the Introduction to the volume, Jerry Kilbride describes a night in January 1989 when he and Lee Gurga drove south from Dubuque, “skirting the Mississippi River on the Iowa side” and continued their itinerary into Illinois, concluding: “I have the pleasure of inviting you to come along with Lee into a place that Jack Kerouac called sweet green Illinois.” [Note: In the third chapter of On the Road, Kerouac actually said “great green Illinois.”]

In this ambience Gurga’s haiku took form and measured spaces of “emptiness,” however we may construe that—including his explicit allusion (from correspondence with him) to the Oriental concept of “emptiness” as unlimited potential rather than vacuity. Although I personally am unable to make this view an integrative perspective in reading most of the poems in this volume, I chose not to consider the poet’s environment literally “empty,” but to infer that life anywhere may seem drab and meaningless until the imagination vitalizes it, realizes meaning from it. The title haiku (33) is found on the last page of the first section, “Scattered on the Pond.” The second, “Class Reunion,” the third, “Heart-Shaped Leaves,” and the last, “Shadows on the Wall” fill out the small volume and, figuratively, the “emptiness.” If one believes in God’s infinite creativity, and God’s being good,” there should be no gaps, emptiness. Emptiness in human terms might imply that man’s creative imagination is inoperative. In any case, by analogy, the poet-creator fills empty spaces by giving dimension, form, “measure.” One may be reminded visually of Blake’s painting, a “vision” of The Ancient of Days setting a compass on the face of the abyss, the primal depths—an image of creation, or “pre-creation.” Some readers of Blake, however, find negative meanings intended in the image. But here is Gurga’s poem:

frozen branches

measure the emptiness

winter sunset (33)

The dormancy of life in winter is the apparent emptiness concretized in “frozen branches,” and the distance between them and the winter sunset will be filled in spring and summer with revived life.

Selectively, one can show a natural seasonal progression in this section, from spring into winter. The first haiku in “Scattered on the Pond” is the title piece:

bud scales

scattered on the pond

spring dream (3)

The “scales” that enclosed the buds or catkins float on the pond, a scene as anticipatory vision—a dream of spring to come, or, I suppose, a dream in spring. The “action” is created by the consonance and alliteration: bud, pond, dream, scales, scattered, spring. Characteristics of the haiku in this section most of the collection illustrates Gurga’s skill in creating moods. In fact, an interrelated series of moods unifies the first section.

For example, a sense of loneliness, isolation:

farm dog calling

calling to its echo

deep in the forest (11)

The emptiness here is the echo of the dog’s bark, which it calls to in the forest. The haiku suggests a continuing echo from emptiness.

In another haiku, isolation motif is generated by the image of a single flower on a hillside covered with its species (Erythronium):

hillside of troutlily—

in the mossy log’s shadow

a single bloom (5)

Out of the mass, the poet’s attention centers on the isolated particular.

Or, his vision may include life and death in the same moment:

opossum bones

wedged in an upper fork—

budding leaves (6)

We recognize a Whitmanesque mergence in this inclusion of death with the image of spring rejuvenation. Such tensions are found in a number of haiku:

evening haze:

in the dead oak a bluebird

broods her eggs (7)

Always the telling detail, the natural fact. In spring waters a toad is calling; in the last rays of sunset the green cones glow in the tops of windbreak pines; the bobwhite calls in the summer sunrise; the redwing blackbird is motionless in the “winter wheat” stirred by the summer breeze. Usually, any imminent danger is just hinted at, rarely as dramatic as in an old pond, “out of the watersnake’s mouth / the toad’s eyes.” (13) On the contrary, his “events” seem played down, made to seem almost insignificant—as when two senses are quietly played together:

the orchid scent

of the old catalpa tree

buzzing with bees (14)

The alliteration is definitely functional but unobtrusive. The poet also contrives concurrences functionally. In the following haiku, one may ask what is the logic of a “field of bluebells” and overhead the “cry of the hawk”?

field of bluebells

over the river bottom—

cry of the hawk (15)

Our perspective is shifted high over the river, high over the field of bluebells, so that we have a “hawks-eye view.” Such shifts may seem, right to the reader without one’s having to consciously “analyze” the poem.

Similarly, undramatic events may suggest implications that suddenly illuminate the haiku as we ponder it on a second reading

fresh forest litter

covers the little scar

where the ginseng was (16)

An irony lurks in the simple statement about harvesting a wild plant, undoubtedly Panax quinquefolium, a North American variety of ginseng. The word derives from Mandarin Jen shen, because the forked root resembles a human with limbs. Much lore has grown up around this herb. Hence, the suggestion of man’s violation of nature, a theme appearing in other of his haiku. For example, the gentle (one detects it in the “gentle” Robert Frost, also a deceptive mask) implication that man constantly violates nature.

Here in an illustrative haiku we smile at the suggestion the loggers had been picking bluebells and accidentally dropped one and left it lying.

summer morning—

a withered bluebell

loggers left behind (18)

Indeed, like the loggers the hunter leaves destruction behind.

cool balsam woods—

behind the sweep of beach

one spent casing (29)

Gurga’s professional training undoubtedly helped discipline his accuracy of observation. Here is an example of looking closely at minutiae, almost a tone of spoofing the haiku principle of precise seeing:

spot of sunlight—

on a blade of grass the dragonfly

changes its grip (19)

There is a note of grim irony in this “coached” objectivity as he records details of the butterfly crushed on the automobile windshield:

legs pawing

the summer wind—monarch

in the wiper blade (21)

Intentionally, I assume, there is a break from an impersonal tone of scientific tone of reportage, and a conscious exploitation of connotation. The monarch butterfly, broken against a machine and helplessly “pawing” suggests the dying of a royal warrior’s horse.

Violence and destruction, however deplored as conscious behavior intended to harm, is still a part of the natural order. It may also be implicit in our playful and “constructive” activities. In the following piece, the speaker participates in autumnal breakdown, subsuming himself aimlessly and pleasurably as a natural force:

going out of my way

to crunch them as I walk:

first leaves of autumn (22)

Sometimes apparently neutral actions may humorously suggest some ancient pattern of action, although this Frostian symbolism is not characteristic of Gurga’s writing.

     Gurga strives most often to arrest moments in the subtle passage of seasons, as in a scene depicting the mowing and baling of hay (oats, alfalfa, vetch, or whatever). After the hard work of baling, there is a pause until the bales are trucked away.

bales of hay

dot the bluestem meadow—

morning breeze

Again the distance, bales being seen as dots in the field of stubble. A time of waiting, of kinetic relaxation, a sense of completion. A breeze wafts in morning fragrances from the field. They may have worked through most of the night. Now a time of rest, stasis.

He is less successful, I think, when he resorts to personification, generally avoided by haikuists.

palisade

folding its shadow

into autumn (25)

The haiku lacks immediacy. The rail or picket fence, in its irregularity, sagging and bending, is attributed agential force. Instead of personification and abstraction, his better haiku center in concreteness, specificity, while avoiding the “pathetic fallacy.”

mid-November:

autumn woods empty

                                        the crow (26)

The woods may have seemed empty, but, no, there is the crow! Nature may seem empty to the unobserving, but is not: “after / chickadee / stillness” (27) and “foxglove / hums / the autumn hillside” (28). The hillside is covered with foxglove (Digitalis purpurea), but a single plant is metonymically made to stand for, represent, the entire hillside. Further, it is the bees inside the blossoms that make the humming sound.

The section titled “Class Reunion” contains haiku of diverse moods and tones. The first piece illustrates the author’s ability to convey emotions without sentimentality, which he avoids by nicely tempered irony, sometimes alloyed with humor.

ashes

of the fossil collector

scattered on the hills (35)

His appreciation of incongruity, conveyed with affectionate restraint, prevents lapsing into ridicule,

Amish waitress—

black dress reaches down

to her Reeboks (44)

and allow the detachment to view a gathering of colleagues with amused irony:

professional conference

in the restroom all the dentists

washing their hands (47)

This section also contains several haiku generated out of deeply personal emotions connected with a family member. Two of these first appeared at the end of a sequence entitled “DAD CALLS AFTER LUNCH”:

postal chess:

he moves me

from his cell (48)

another Christmas

my parents visit

the son in prison (49)

The concluding haiku in “Class Reunion” is an affectionate allusion to fellow haikuist Sister Mary Thomas Eulberg:

white-haired nun:

in German still

her childhood prayers

“Heart-Shaped Leaves,” the third section, centers almost exclusively in family, his wife and children, as does the fourth section, “Shadows on the Wall.” Many of the haiku nicely capture vibrant moments of familial affection, and some tensions.

while you sleep

the gentle rocking

of the night train (54)

A nicely crafted minimalist poem communicates power in a caught moment:

holding

your hand

heartbeat

Another captures a moment of action-stasis, a kind of punning on “conjugation,” conjugal peace and quiet:

I read

she reads

winter evening (61)

In the nurturing of children Gurga can be sensitively detailed:

one nipple

against the white cotton—

moist halo of milk (62)

And, the final haiku, recalling the death of a father, a grandfather—

another stroke . . .

but for his grandson

the dead hand gestures

Lee Gurga is a poet with a consciousness of his “place,” i.e., his cultural heritage and locale, and the poetic genre in which he has channeled his creative energies. Jerry Kilbride’s Introduction relates incidents on a trip with Lee Gurga into Iowa: “. . . (earlier that day we stood with Sister Thomas Eulberg over a grave as Bill Pauly scraped frozen snow from the headstone and when the name Raymond Roseliep appeared we placed roses around it). As the headlights searched the prairie distances, scanning snowdrifts, illuminating silos and farmhouses, we talked of haiku. I was deeply impressed with Lee’s knowledge of the form, of his love for things Japanese and of consequent poetry springing from the American soil.” Recalling the title haiku, last in the first section (“frozen branches / measure the emptiness— / winter sunset,” I am caught in a sense of paradox as I experience re-reading a haiku in the last section:

I watch the lightning,

you plan to decorate

the room I keep empty

I infer that for the poet there will always be an empty space, that as yet unfilled potential, which poems will in time partially measure. Lee Gurga will continue to find those symbolic spaces which his creativity must respond to.